LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius 52 1 


~ Life of John Brown 
Michael Gold 





~ 


LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 521 
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius 


Life of John Brown 


Michael Gold 


HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY 
GIRARD, KANSAS 





FOREWORD. 


John Brown’s life is a grand, simple epic that 
should inspire one to heroism. No one asks for 
dates and minute details on hearing the life of 
Jesus or Socrates. There are men who have 
proved their superiority to the pettiness of life, 
and who seem almost divine. John Brown is 
‘one of them. I think he was almost our greatest 
American. I know that he was the greatest man 
as eam people of America have yet pro- 

uc 


He did not become a President, a financier, a 
- great scientist or artist; he was a plain and 
rather obscure farmer until his death. That 
is his greatness. He had no great offices, no 
recognition or applause of multitudes to spur 
him on, to-feed his vanity and self-righteous- 
ness. He did his duty in silence; he was an 
outlaw. Only after he had been hung like a 
common murderer, and only after the Civil 
War had come to fulfill his prophecies, was he 
-recognized as a great figure. 


_ But in his life he was a common man to the 
end, a hard-working, honest, Puritan farmer 
with a large family, a man worried with the de- 
tails of poverty, and obscure as ourselves. Now 
we are taught as school-children that only those 
who become Presidents and captains of finance 

- are the successful ones in our democracy. John 

Brown proved that there is another form of 

success, within the reach of everyone, and that 

is to devote one’s life to a great and pure 
cause. 
John Brown was hung as an outlaw; but he 

Was @ success, as Jesus and Socrates were suc- 













4 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN ~ os 


cesses. Some day school-children will be ta igh 
that his had been the only sort of success wo 
striving for in his time. The rest oe 
the personal success s the beetle 
itself a huger ball of dung than its -b 
tles, and exults over it. ce 
John Brown is a legend; but I ue ek 
in the simple, obscure heroes who fig 
freedom today in (ae That is wi 
telling his story. It is the of t 
of men living in America now, 
it. John Brown is still in 
yes, and he has been h 
hundred times since rr: 
soul is marching on; it is the 
and justice, which canes die, or b 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


WHEN SLAVERY WAS RESPECTABLE 


To understand any of the outstanding men of 
-history one must also understand something of 

their background. The Roman Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius persecuted and burned the primitive 
Christians; yet he #s accounted one of the most 
religious and humane of historical figures, and 
his Meditations are commonly considered a 
book of the gentlest and wisest counsel toward 
the good life. ; 

You cannot understand this paradox unless 
you know the history of the Roman state. And 
you cannot understand John Brown unless you 
understand the history of his times. 

John Brown, until the age of fifty, had lived 
the peaceful, laborious life of a Yankee farmer 
with a large family. He hated war, and was 
almost a Quaker; had never handled fire-arms, 
and was a man of deep and silent affections. 
He was deeply religious, read the Bible daily; 
Christianity imbued all the acts of his daily 
existence. 


This man, nearing his sixtieth year, assem- 
bled a group of young men with rifles and took 
the field to wage guerrilla war on slavery. He 
became a warrior, an outlaw. What drove him 
to this desperate stand? 


I think the answer is: Respectability. There 
is nothing more maddening to a man of deep 
moral feeling than to find that slavery has 
become respectable, while freedom is considered 
the mad dream of a fanatic. 


6 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


The slavery of black men had become the 
most respectable institution in America in John 


Brown’s time. It had had a dark and bloody — 
become 


history of a hundred years in which to 
firmly rooted into American life. 

There had been slavery in Europe for cen- 
turies before the discovery of America it 
was white slavery. Each feudal baron owned 
hordes of serfs—white farmers—who were as 
much a part of his land-holdings as his 
horses and ploughs. 

. With the invention of printing, gunpowder 


and machine production the system of feudal- — 


ism declined. The French Revolution io 
deal it-a death blow. The last country where 
this ancient slavery of white men was not dead 
was in Russia; but African slavery, the slavery 
of Negroes, who were heathens, and th 

could morally be bought and sold by Christ 

had been reintroduced on the northern coast 
the Mediterranean by Moorish traders. In the 
year 990 these Moors from the Bar Coast 
first reached the cities of Nigrita, and estab- 
lished an uninterrupted exchange of Saracen 
and European luxuries for black slaves. 


verted. The unhappy Negroes were not con- 
sidered convertible; their slavery was sancti- 
fied by the church. And for the next few cen- 
turies the African slave-trade was the most 
lucrative traffic pursued by mankind. Black 
slaves were to be found in the whole vast area 
of Spanish and Portuguese America, also in 
Dutch and French Guinea and the West Indies. 
It was black men who cleared the jungles, tilled 
the fields, built the cities and roads and laid ~ 

own, in their sweat and blood, the founda- 
tions of civilization in the New World. Great 


i 
] 
| 
: 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 7 


jealous and agers monopolies were formed 
in this traffic of slaves; and its profits were 
greedily shared by philosophers, statesmen and 


kings. . 

In 1776, the American colonies were inhabited 
by two and a half million white persons, who 
owned half a million slaves. Many of the most 
rational and humane leaders of the Revolution 
saw the inconsistency of slave-holders making 
a revolution in the name of freedom. There 
Was some early agitation against slavery, but 
the humanitarians were in a minority. Even 
then slavery had become respectable and profit- 
able. It would have been easy and cheap to 
have freed the slaves then. It would have been 
the most practicable thing the young nation 
could have done. Not a life would have been 
lost; and the development of the country might 
have been even more rapid, But it was not 
done; such acts need more far-sightedness than 
the average Man possesses, 

Slavery grew by leaps and bounds, as the 
country was growing. 

The slave trader, shrewd, intelligent and rich, 
kidnapped young men and women in Africa and 
did a uge business. His markets became the 
feature of every Southern town. The planters 
lolled at their ease, and devised ways and means 
of forcing their slaves to breed more rapidly. 
The slaves were treated as impersonally as 
animals. Mothers were sold away from their 
children, and husbands from their wives. Gen- 
erations of black men died in bondage, and left 
their children only the sad inheritance of slav- 
ery. 

The South developed an aristocrat class of 
indolent white men and women who looked 
down on all work as ignominious, and who used 
their minds, not in the arts or sciences, but to 
find new moral justifications for slavery. 


y LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


Slavery was respectable. “It is an act of phi- 
lanthropy to keep the Negro here, as we keep 
our children in subjection for their own good, 
said a Southern statesman. Slavery was moral. 
Even most of the respectability of the North 
enlisted in its defense. In 1826, Edward Everett, 
the great Massachusetts statesman, said in Con- 
gress that slavery was sanctioned by religion 
and by the United States Constitution. 

The churches of almost every denomination 
were solidly behind slavery. The ie 
Court ruled that it was constitutional. pro- 
slavery President occupied the White 
and Senator Sumner, a lonely abolitionist, was 
beaten. down with a loaded cane on the senate 
floor because he dared say a brave word 
against the nation’s crime. 

In 1838 William Lloyd Garrison founded the 
Liberator, first of the abolitionist journals. He 
said that “the constitution is a covenant with 
death, and an agreement with hell,” and he 
fought slavery with all his power. “Our coun- 
try is the world, our countrymen all mankind,” 
was the slogan of his journal. nm was 
beaten by a mob in a northern city for his 
courage; and other abolitionists were tarred 
and feathered, lynched, and attacked by mobs 
of respectable northern merchants and church- 
goers, much as pacifists were beaten by mobs 
during the late war. 


Slavery was respectable. Negro field hands 


sold for $1,000 each, and innocent black babies 
were worth $100 each to the white master as 
they suckled at a Negro mother’s breast. 

To attack slavery was to attack the con- 
stitution, the church, the government, and the 
institution of private property. To attack re- 
spectability has always been the crime of the 
saviours, and respectability is the cross on 
which they are forever hung. 


_ LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 9 


HOW JOHN BROWN BECAME AN ABOLI- 
TIONIST 


In the pagan ages and in the more distant 
days of savagery, men were individuals. They 
had no social imagination. They could stand 


_ by and see another man writhe in tortures, and 


laugh at him. Civilization has been develop- 
ing social imagination; it has been breeding 


more and more the type of human being who 


feels the suffering and injustice of another as 


his own. 
John Brown was perhaps born with this 


strain in him. In 1857, when he had alrea 
plunged into his life-work, and was in the thic 


4 


of bloody fights in Kansas, he sat down to write 


a most charming and tender letter to a little 
boy who was the son of one of his friends in 


the east. Those who think of fighters like 


John Brown as possessed by only a lust for 


battle, ought to read this letter. It reveals 
how soft was his heart under the grim mask of 


the Kansas warrior. 


The letter is autobiographical. It tells how 


John Brown first became acquainted with the 


horrors of slavery, and what effect it had on 
his imagination. 

This letter is so touching, and so remarkable 
for the picture it gives of John Brown’s early 
years, also for the picture of the man’s mature 
character as revealed by his own words, that I 
am tempted to give it in full. I shall give only 
parts of it, however: 


THE LETTER TO MASTER HENRY L. STEARNS 
“My dear Young Friend:—I had not forgotten 


my promise to write you; but my constant care 


and anxiety have obliged me to put it off a 


10 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


long time. I do not flatter myself I can wri 
anything that will very much interest you; 
have concluded to send you a short story o 
certain boy of my acquaintance; and for 
ele and shortness of name, I 

ohn 

“This story will be mainly a narration 
follies and errors, which I hope Pott fen eid ava 
but there is one thjng connec Me 
will be calculated to encourage tS 
person to persevering effort, and that 
degree of success in accomplishing his ob. 
which to a great extent marked the course 
this boy throughout my entire acquain 
with him; notwithstanding his moderate ca 
ity, ¢nd still more moderate acquirements. 

“John was born May 9, 1800, at To: 
Connecticut; of poor and hard-working 
a descendant on the side of his father of 
of the co pe of the Mayflower v= lan 
at Plymouth, 1620. His mother was descen 
from a man who came at an cacy ie verte’ 
New England from Amsterdam, 
Both his father’s and his mother’s ioe 
served in the war of the revolution; his fa’ 
father died in a barn at New York while in the 
service, in 1776. 

“I cannot tell you of anything in the 
four years of John’s life worth rm ym Sav 
that at an early age — Me tempted 
large brass pins belon ing toa rae whi. li 
in the gage and stole them. 
detected by his mother; and after havivig 
day to think of the wrong, received from h 
a thorough whipping. 

“When he was five years old his father m 
to Ohio, then a wilderness filled with 
beasts and Indians. During the long jo 
which was periormed in part or mostly ore 
ox-team, he was called on by turns to 












LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 11, 


a boy five years older, and learned to think 
he could accomplish smart things in driving 
the cows and riding the horses. Sometimes he 
met with rattlesnakes which were very large, 
and which some of the company generally man- 
aged to kill. 

“After getting to Ohio he was for some time 
rather afraid of the Indians, and of their rifles; 
but this soon wore off, and he used to hang 
about them quite as much as was consistent 
with good manners, and learned a trifle of their 
talk. His father at this time learned to dress 
deer skin, and John, who was perhaps rather 
observing, ever after remembered the entire 
process of deer skin dressing, so that he could 
at any time dress his own leather such as squir- 
rel, raccoon, cat, wolf or dog skins; and also 
he learned to make whip lashes, which brought 
him in some change at various times, and was 
useful in many ways. 

“At six years old John began to be quite a 
rambler in the new wild country, finding birds 
and squirrels, and sometimes a wild turkey’s 
nest. Once a poor Indian boy gave him a yel- 
low marble, the first he had ever seen. This 
he thought a good deal of, and kept it a good 
while; but at last he lost it one day. It took 
years to heal the wound, and I think he cried 
at times about it. About five months after 
this he caught a young squirrel, tearing off 
its tail in doing it; and getting severely bitten 
at the same time himself. He however held on 
to the little bob-tailed squirrel and finally got 
him perfectly tamed, so that he almost idolized 
his pet. This, too, he lost, by its wandering 
away; and for a year or two John was in 
mourning; and looking at all the squirrels he 
could see to try and discover Bobtail, if pos- 
sible. He had also at one time become the 
owner of a little ewe lamb which did finely 
until it was about two-thirds grown, when it 


12 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


sickened and died. This brought another . 
tracted mourning season; not that he felt Rae 
pepe paws loss so heavily, for that was never 

is disposition; but so strong and earnest were 
his attachments. It was a school of of adversity 
for John; you may laugh at all this, but they 
were sore trials to him. 


“John was never quarrelsome; but was 
comsivoly fond of the roughest and hardest kin 
of play; and could never get enough of it. Hi 
would always choose to stay at home and work 
hard, rather than go to school. To et sent 
alone through the wilderness to v 
erable distances was particularly his. delight; 
and in this he was often indul: 
the time he was twelve years old be was eo 
off more than a hundred miles with com 
of cattle; and he would have thought his char. 
acter much injured had he been obliged to be 
helped in such a job. This was a boyish feel- 
ing, but characteristic, nevertheless. 


“When the war broke out with bm oe in 
1812 his father soon commenced furn g the 
troops with beef cattle, the collection and driy- 
ing of which afforded John some opportuni 
for the chase, on foot, of wild meecte 4 re 1a 
cattle through the woods. During 

had some chance to form his. own sien yu judg. 
ment of men and measures; and — get 
what he saw was to so far dis 

military affairs that he veut ne ee tools a , 
drill, but got off by paying fines; and 
along like a Quaker until his age had ¢ 
cleared him of military duty. 

“During the war with England a circum- 
stance Gremsin that in the end meee him a oe 
determined Abolitionist and led him to swear 
eternal war with slavery. John was stoppi 
for a short time with a very gen 
lord, since made a United States Marshal. This 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 13 


man owned a slave boy near John’s age, a boy 
very active, intelligent and full of good feeling 
to whom ,John was under considerable obliga- 
tion for numerous little acts of kindness. 


“The Master made a great pet of John; 
brought him to table with his finest company 
and friends and called their attention to every 
little smart thing he said or did, and to the 
fact of his being more than a hundred miles 
from home with a company of cattle alone; 

while the Negro boy (who was fully if not more 
than his equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed 
and lodged in cold weather, and beaten before 
John’s eyes with iron shovels or any other 
thing that came first to hand, 


“This brought John to reflect on the wretch- 

ed, hopeless condition of fatherless and mother- 
less slave children; for such children have nei- 
ae pooere or mothers to protect and provide 
or them. 


“He sometimes would raise the question in 
his mind: Is God, then, their father?” — 


» 


HOW JOHN BROWN EDUCATED HIMSELF 


There are other matters treated in this long 
and charming letter, written by an outlaw 57 
pears old, to a boy of twelve. One detail that 
§ important is the analysis of his own char- 
acter. John Brown says his father early made 
him a sort of foreman in his tanning estab- 
lishment, and that though he got on in the most 
friendly way with everyone, “the habit so early 
formed of being obeyed rendered him in after 
life too much disposed to speak in an ‘mperious 
or dictating way.” John Brown was ever hum- 
ble, and severely chastised his own faults, but 


14 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN . 
this habit of ane a leader served him in pee 
stead, and made him the born captain of for orn 


hopes he later became, 


Another detail that interests us is his account 
of his early reading. Working-class Americans, 
and they are the majority of the nation, do 
not go to the high schools and universities. 
Neither did John Brown. But they can 
history, as he did at ten years, and they 
study and make themselves proficient in some 
field, as he made a Surveyor of himself by home 
study. He also read passionately, he says, the 
lives of great, good and wise men; their say 
and .writings; the school of biography 
seems to have nurtured so many 
John Brown never went to school after k 
childhood; but he became an expert surveyo 
he learned the fine points of cattle breeding and 
ocean he was a student of ape he 
knew the Bible almost by heart, he studied mili- 
tary tactics later in life, he was familiar with 
the lives and times of most of the great leaders 
of mankind, and best of all, he knew how to. 
— — to great deeds, and lead théentin the 

e. ; 


Great men do not need to own a colleges 
sect they teach themselves, they are taug 
y Life. 


y 
How meaningless college degrees would sound — 
if attached after the names of Brutus, Peri 
Socrates,. Caius Gracchus, Buddha, Jesus, Wail 
Pd Jefferson, Danton, William Lloyd Gar- 
rison! 


As for instance: Jesus Christ, D.D.; Robert 
Burns, M.A.; Victor Hugo, B.S.; John Brown, 
Ph.D.! How superfluous the titles of 
universities, when Life has crowned the student 
with real and greener laurels! Yes, there a 
many “pines not taught in the colleges! - 







7 
7 


E 








d 


- an ‘3 - oat ff ue 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN _ 15 


‘THE MOULDING OF JOHN BROWN 


' And so by his own pen, we have had illumi- 
nated for us the life of John Brown up to his 
twentieth year. We see him, a big, strong boy, 
fond of hard work, eapeple in all he put his 
hand to, a young man bred in the hard college 
of life in an early pioneer settlement. He was 
fond of reading good books, and improving his 
mind; he was rather shy, and yet filled with 
an extraordinary self-confidenve, which made 
him a born leader, one who could show the 
‘way to men older than himself, and command 
them, and himself, in the straight line of duty. 

The subsequent life of John Brown cannot be 
understood unless one knows all the environ- 
mental forces and the heredity that went to 
mould him. John Brown, a Puritan in the 
austerity of his manner of living, the narrow 
yet burning reality of his vision, and the hard- _ 
ships he later underwent, came of a family of 
American pioneers. To John Brown life from 
the outset meant incessant strife, first against 
unconquered nature, then in the struggle for 
a living, and finally in that effort to be a Sam- 
son to the oben Philistines in which his 
existence culminated. Z 

At twenty John Brown married Dianthe Lusk, 
a plain but quiet and amiable girl, as deeply 
religious as her young husband, and as ready 
as_he to assume all the serious burdens of life. 

He was working in his father’s tanning estab- 
lishment at this time, at Hudson, Ohio. But in 
May, 1825, John Brown moyed his family to 
Richmond, near Meadville, Pennsylvania, the 
first of his many moves for he was imbued with 
a deep restlessness, the hunger of the pioneer 
for virgin lands and new enterprises. 
__Here, with his characteristic energy, he 
cleared twenty-five acres of timber land, built 








16 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


a fine tannery, sunk vats, and in a few mor 
had leather tanning in all of them. Like 







was “as enterprising and honest as John Bro 
and as useful to the county.” 
In Richmond the family dwelt for ten 
John Brown raised corn, did his ; 
brought the first blooded stock into the nt} 
and became the first postmaster. Here, also, 
Richmond, the first great grief came into Johr 
Brown’s life, to school him in that stoicism th 
later made him the hero of a great cause. 
four year old son died in 1831, and the nex 
year his wife, Dianthe, died after ha 
and worked beside him like a good, ¢ 
woman for twelve years, giving birth to 
children in that time, five of whom grew 
vigorous manhood and womanhood. 
Nearly a year later John Brown was 
for the second time, to Mary Anne Day, 
ter of a blacksmith. She was then a hk 
silent girl of sixteen, who had come to 
Brown’s home with an older sister to care fe 
his children after his wife’s death. He quickl 
grew fond of the young pioneer girl; one day hi 
gave her a letter offering pee 
so overcome that she dared not read ft. ; 
morning she found courage to do so, and whel 
she went down to the spring for water for th 
house, he followed her and she gave 
answer there. 
Mary Brown was the best wife a John B 























LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 17 


could nave found. She had great physical rug- 
gedness, and she bore for her husband thirteen 
children, seven of whom died in childhood, 
and two of whom were killed in early manhood 
at Harper’s Ferry. She did more than her full 
share of the arduous labor of a large pioneer 
household, and she endured hardships like a 
Spartan mother. She was strong; and she had 
a noble and unflinching character. It was only 
a heroic woman such as this who could have 
been the wife of a hero; who could have given 
husband and sons cheerfully to the cause of 
abolition, and been so silent and brave even 
after their death. 

John Brown worked hard; he had no vices, 
he was honest and painstaking, but somehow 
success in business always eluded him. This 
was another of the griefs of his life. He blamed 
himself for his failures, but it was really not 
his fault. It requires a real worship of money 
to make one a business success, and John Brown 
never took money as seriously as it demands of 
its lovers. After ten years in Pennsylvania, of 
much hard work with little results, he moved 
to Franklin Mills, in Ohio, where he entered 
the tanning business with Zenas Kent, a well- 
to-do business man of that town. Here he aiso 
became involved in a land development scheme 
that was ruined by a large corporation’s maneu- 
vers. He was so deeply involved in this and 
other ventures that in the bad times of 1837 
he failed. In 1842 he was again compelled to 
go through bankruptcy proceedings. 

In after years John Brown explained these 
failures to his oldest son as the result of the 
false doctrine of doing business on credit. 

“Instead of being thoroughly imbued with the 
doctrine of pay as you go,” he wrote, “I started 
out in life with the idea that nothing could be 
done without capital, and that a poor man must 
use his credit and borrow; and this pernicious 


18 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


doctrine has been the rock on which I, as well 
as many others, have split. The practical effect 
of this false doctrine has been to keep me like 


a toad under a harrow most of my business life. — 


Running into debt includes so much evil that 
I hope all my children will shun it as they 
would a pestilence.” 

John Brown never gave up in despair any- 
thing he had attempted; his business failures 
bruised him sorely, but he arose each time like 
a rugged wrestler and began a new endeavor. 
In 1839, at one of his darkest periods, he 
a sheep growing and wool marketing venture in 
which he engaged for many years, going into 
partnership with Simon Perkins, a w 
merchant of Akron, Ohio. This partnership was 
the longest and final one of Brown’s business 
career. 

So that is how one must think of Brown, too; 
not only as the consecrated, almost inhuman 
battler and martyr, but also as the sane, plod- 
ding, patient farmer, tanner, surveyor, 
estate-speculator, and practical shepherd. He 
was a tall, spare, silent man, terribly pious, 
terribly honest, a good neighbor and community 
leader, and the father of a large family of sons 
and daughters—a patriarch out of the Bible, 
beg is flocks and gathering about him a 
tribe of young and stalwart sons. 

He was a typical pioneer American of those 
rough days in the settling of the middle west. 
He had no time for frivolity, though there was 
a im humor in the man; he brought his 
children up strictly, yet with a justice that 
made them all love, revere and respect him 
until the end; and he had his share of those 
bee sorrows that crush so many men; his 
irst beloved wife had died, with an infant 
son; he had failed in business; and he had 
lost by death no less than nine children, three 
of whom perished in one month in those hard 


o 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 19 


surroundings, and one of whom, a little daugh- 
ter, was accidently scalded to death by an elder 
sister. These deaths hurt John Brown cruelly, 
for though stern and stoic, he was a fiercely 
tender father; all his affections were fierce, 
though inexpressible and deep, as a lion’s. 


“I seem to be struck almost dumb by the 
dreadful news,” he wrote his family, when he 
heard of this accident. “One more dear little 
feeble child I am to meet no more till the dead, 
small and great, shall stand before God. I 
trust that none of you will feel disposed to 
cast an unreasonable blame on my dear Ruth 
on account of the dreadful trial we are called 
to suffer. This is a bitter cup indeed; but 
blessed be God; a brighter day shall dawn; 
ne let us not sorrow as they who have no 

ope.” 

The Browns had made at least ten moves in 
the years from 1830 to 1845, and John Brown 
had engaged in no less than seven different 
occupations. But always, under the business 
man and farmer, there had been the solemn 

_philosopher brooding on God and the mystery 
and terror of life; and always, under the sober 
father and citizen, there had been planning 
and brooding and suffering keenly the tender 
humanitarian, the Christ-like martyr, the re- 
lentless fighter who would finally pay- with 
his life to strike a blow at Slavery, “that sum 
of all villainies.”’ 

In this patriarchal farmer of the middle 
west, Freedom was forging and sh-rpening a 
terrible weapon that was some day to be turned 
against Tyranny. Quietly, in peaceful sur- 
roundings the work was being done; no one 
knew the fire in this man, least of all himself. 


oo get 


20 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN &, 
4s 


THE GROWTH OF AN ABOLITIONIST 


For though John Brown had always been an 
abolitionist, though he had learned from his 
father, and from his own experiences to hate 
slavery and its manifold brutalities, it was not 
until his thirty-fith year that John ’ 
showed any more active hatred of it than ‘ 
hundreds of Ohio farmers around him. Like 
them, he aided when he could, in the work of 
the Underground Railroad. ousands of ‘ 
Negroes and white abolitionists were e 
in this work of passing fugitive slaves from 
the South up over the Canadian eae where 
they were being restored to manh under | 
the Gag of monarchism, 

But John Brown, in 1834, nem ny thinking» 
that education of the Negroes might be an im- 

rtant way toward the solution of their prob 
ems. He formed plans of starting a : 
for them. He and his family at this time, 
though his wool-business was going hey had 

or 


ably, lived in extreme fr ty, f fy Be 
agreed to save all they could toward the > 
lishment of some such school. For years John ~ 
Brown dreamed of such ventures as these; and ~ 
he read all the journals of the small abolition-_ 
ist groups, and met many of the leaders. He 
always spoke against slavery in churches or 
political meetings where he hegneeee to be; 
and he made friends with man and 
showed a deep interest in all their problems. 
But not yet had he formed any of those bellig- 
erent ges that later were his whole life. 
He still believed that abolition might be ef- 
fected by education and peaceful tation. 
Events were piling up too — y against 

such a view, however. e South grew more 
aggressive every day. The slave va seemed — 
to carry everything before it. It had broken 


) 
; 
q 
: 
‘ 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 2i 


€ 
the agreement of 1820 by extending slaver 
above the Mason and Dixon line into Missouri. 
“It had forced the war against Mexico, and had 
carved out huge new tracts for slavery. It 
dominated the government of the United States. 
All of the Presidents were pro-slavery, or they 
could not hope for office. Congress was pro- 
slavery, and the Senate, too. 

And it was not only in the South that the 
life of an abolitionist was worth little more 
than a pinch of snuff. The slavery venom had 
crept into the North, for powerful economic 
reasons. The Northern merchants and manu- 
facturers made their profits by selling ma- ~ 
chinery, and the goods made by machinery, to 
the agricultural, cotton-raising South. ; 
the South threatened to secede from the union, 
or at the least, to force a low tariff on im- 
ports, and buy its goods in Europe, if the 
abolitionists were not curbed. 

There were not many of these abolitionists; 
but they were outspoken, intense, and made 
themselves heard at all costs. They paid a 
heavy price for this courage. They were per- 
secuted, tarred and feathered, and in many 
cases lynched by the Northern mobs. 

Then the Southern slave system seemed to 
have reached a triumphant climax in two 
events: the first, the passing of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, in 1851, and the other, the battle 
over the admission of Kansas as free soil or 
slave territory, 

The fugitive slave law incensed John Brown 
to fury, as it did every other abolitionist. It 
was a federal law forced by the South which 
forced the state officials of every Northern 
state, however much they might hate slavery, 
to join in the hunt for runaway slaves ani 
their helpers. 

A United States sloop was sent to bring back 


22 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN ’ 


a slave who had fled to Boston. The abolition- 


ists tried to rescue him, but were foiled, with 
two men killed, Scenes such as these a 
everywhere in the North, the enforcement 
the law. Abolitionists were arrested in com- 
munities where everyone of their neighbors 
was also anti-slavery. Slaves, who had been 
freemen for years and years in the North, were 
captured and dragged back to bondage by govy- 
ernment officials. a 
The abolitionists became more fiery in their 
desperation. Many of them, like Garrison, be- 
gan preaching that the North set up a govern- 


ment of its own: “No Union With Slave ~ 


holders!” was the slogan 


And the Kansas affair heaped coal on 4 
mise. both 


territory could decide whether or not be 
wanted slavery or freedom, and could 
their choice when the territory. was 

to the union. In other words, both sides would 
keep their hands off new territory; and the 
federal government would not interfere. 

Kansas was such a territory; it was being 
rapidly settled, and in a few years was to 
come up for admission as a state. 

And what was happening was that the South 
was flooding this territory with spurious set- 
tlers; idle, whiskey-drinking ruffians armed 
with shotguns and revolvers, who were in- 
timidating the Northern settlers who had 
come, and were stealing the elections from 
them, by force of arms. 

The South was openly breaking its agree- 
ment with the north; it was openly d 
its intent to make Kansas another addition 
to the slave states, : 





¥ 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 23 


To the abolitionists in the North this seemed 
like the last straw. The South was at its 
flood-tide of domination; it controlled every- 
thing in the American union; and now it was 
moving forward to make its domination 
permanent by any means; even by the means 
of murder and intimidation. 

Reports of assassinations, whippings, and the 
burning down of Northern settlers’ cabins came 
every week from Kansas. The abolitionists 
began raising emigrant companies of North- 
erners who would go to Kansas to vote for 

‘freedom, even though the South sent its cannon 
against them. 

The Brown family had by now moved to 
North Elba, New York, a little Adirondack 
colony of fugitive Negroes who had settled on 
the lands owned by Gerrit Smith, a wealthy 
and sincere abolitionist, John Brown had been 
of much practical service to the Negroes there; 
but he and his sons, like every other foe of 
slavery, were deeply shaken by the events in 
Kansas. 

It seemed horrible to everyone, that after 
twenty years of bitter agitation, slavery was 
not waning, but was stronger than ever—in- 
deed, was threatening to swallow up even the 
North. 

Strong men were needed in Kansas; and so 
John Brown’s sons went there. They were 
men of peace; they went there as bona fide 
settlers, to take up claims, and to cast their 
vote, when the time came, for freedom. But in 
two months they were writing letters to North 
Elba asking their father to send them all the 
rifles he could collect. 

“We have seen some of the curses of slavery, 
and they are many,” wrote one of the sons in 
the very first letter home. “The boys have all 
their feelings worked up, and are ready to 


~ t 













24 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


fight. Send us arms; we need them more ie 
we do bread.” ; 

John Brown collected the arms; 
was more, he delivered them with hi his 
hands. He wound u he business aff 
his strong, patient w e of the 
Elba farm, and went to — 
sas. The curtain was now r 
act of the universal drama called John Br 
The man of God, the tender friend of 
slave children, and old, tortured slave m ‘ 
the man of the plough and the counter, 
patriarch and citizen was at last ready to 
come Captain John Brown of 
John Brown, the outlaw, the warrior, the 
of freedom. 

At the mere mention of his name B 
Ruffians and swashbuc adherents — 
slavery were soon to tremble and even | 
as though a devil were behind. And he w 
bowed with cares and ee turning gra) 
and he had never handled fire-arms; and he 
was at the age when other men begin to talk 
of retiring from business and life, —— 
long for peace and reflection, in som 
meer scene, away from the world & 
pro 

He was fifty-five years old, "Tes 


an ea? 


a 


THE SITUATION IN KANSAS “ 


As John Brown left for Kansas, he turned to 
his wife and the remaining members of his — 
family and said: “If it is so painful for us og 
part with the hope of mee again, how m 
it be with the poor slaves, who have no Aries 


John Brown was always eters hha aan 
. tures; but the events before bf 


ere 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 25 


tried the hope of a superman; they were to be 
bloody, exacting, terrible, It was what he 


; needed, however, for John Brown went to Kan- 


sas with a greater project in his mind, the 
attack on Virginia and the South, and Kansas 
was to be for him the rough, harsh school in 
ay he could train himself for that supreme 
effort. 

With his youngest son, Oliver, then about 
eighteen years old, and a son-in-law, Henry 
Thompson, John Brown left Chicago in August. 
The party had a heavily loaded wagon drawn 
by a “nice, stout young horse,’ that was 
stricken with distemper when they reached 
Missouri, and could barely drag himself along. 
Their progress was therefore slow; a scant 
Seven or eight miles a day. But it gave them 
an opportunity to see and hear things in Mis- 
souri, then fiercely pro-slavery, and the reser- 
voir from which were drawn most of the Border 
Ruffins who were raiding Kansas, and trying 
to force it into the phalanx of slavery states. 


Companies of armed men were constantly 


; passing and re-passing on the route to Kansas, 


and they were continually boasting “of what 
deeds of patriotism and chivalry they had per- 
formed there, and of the still more mighty 
deeds they were yet to do.” As Brown wrote 
home in a letter. “No man of them would 
blush when telling of their cruel treading down 
and terrifying of defenceless Free State men; 
seemed to take peculiar satisfaction in telling 
of the fine horses and mules they had killed 
in their numerous expeditions against the 
damned Abolitionists.” 

John Brown was roused by all this; already 
he was changing from the peaceful patriarch to 
the fearless warrior in the field. me incident 
illustrates this. When the little party reached 


the Missouri River at Brunswick, Missouri, 


There came to them an old man, frankly 
sourian, frankly inguisitive after the manner 


of the frontier. here are you 2 
asked. “To Kansas,” repli Soke Eleaee 
“Where from?” asked the old man. “From Ne 


York,” answered John Brown. 
“You won’t live to get there,” the old Mis.” 
sourian said, grimly. 
“We are cere John B 
“not to die alone.” Before that apart 4 and 
eagle Bog the old Missourian quailed; he 


26 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 
they sat themselves down to wait for the ferry. 





mh was in October, after an arduous tri 
John Brown and his party reached the ily 
settlement at Osawotamie. The i 
weary and all but me by with about 4 
cents between them. they found the b 
tlement in great distress; ssi of the 2 


the rough conditions. They were living in a 

tent exposed to the chill winds, and were 

rei ee over little fires on the bare ground. 

All the food left was a small ry of = , 

nae their cows, some corn and a 

It was an unusually cold winter that eae 

October 26 John Brown saw the hardest f 

ing he had ever witnessed south of his 

farm-house in the Adirondacks; and all 

| Spe pioneers suffered in it as did e 
TOWDS. 


Nobody in Kansas that first winter knew 
what comforts ahr While the Browns d 
the penalty for living on low ground a 
ravine and in tents, their bitter experience with 
sickness and hunger was not as bad as that of 
many other Northern families. Starvation and 
death looked in at many a door where parents 
lay Loa while famished children crawléd 
about the dirt floors crying for food, and shriek- 


LIFE QF JOHN BROWN 27 


ing with fear if any footstep approached, lest 
the comer be a Border Ruffian, (as the South- 
erners were called) instead of a friend. For 
_ pure misery and heart-breaking suffering these 
pioneer tales of Kansas are not surpassed by 
any in the whole history of the winning of 
the West. ‘ 
But old Jonn Brown was indomitable; he put 
new life and energy into his six sons; by No- 
vember two shanties were well advanced, and 
the food problem had been lightened. They 
were getting into good shape for the winter, 
and preparing to take up their share in the 
settling of Kansas, when the hot breath of 
war scorched all these plans, as it did many 
another Northern settler’s. 

There would be little time for growing corn 
for the Browns thereafter, or for the other 
settlers; the slavery question demanded an 
answer first. 

One dread that had worried the Browns be- 
fore leaving home proved unnecessary. It was 
their fear of the Indians. The Browns were 
terrified when the first big band of Sacs and 
Foxes in war-paint surrounded their tent, 
whooping and yelling, but they had the good 
sense to ground their arms, and the Indians 
did likewise. Thereafter both sides were great 
friends. John, Jr., went often to visit their old 
chief; once, when in the following summer, the 
Indians came to call again, they were “fought” 
with gifts of melons and green corn. “That,” 
said Jason Brown, “was the nicest party I 
ever saw.” 

John Brown, Jr., used to ask the old chief 
questions, as. “Why do you Sacs and Foxes not 
build houses and barns like the Ottawas and 
the Chippewas? Why do you not have schools 
and churches like the Delawares and Shawnees? 
wy do you have no preachers and teachers?” 
And the chief replied in a staccato which sum- 


28 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


med up wonderfully the bitter, conte ee ex- 
perience of his people: “We want 


d ba Ww t no schools and has! 
an rns, e@ want n 


We want no preachers and teachers. We 
enough now. 

No, the Indians were friends. The men 
to be feared were not ge Sie putting in 
appearance, One night Fd rs age hea’ 
armed Missourians rode up to the —. 
asked whether any stray cattle had been 
The Browns replied in the me and then, 
as newcomers, they were asked, in the 
slang, how they were “on the 

“We are Free State,” was the answer. “and 
what is more, we are Abolitionists.” 

The men rode away, but from that moment 
the Browns were marked for destruction. They 


did not shrink from danger, however. } 
nailed their flag to the mast; armed th j 
e 


and sey Ae gt the thick of all the poli 
battles then raging. In a short tim 
settlement was to become known 7 a center of © 
fearless, and if poe violent 

to all who wished to see human slavery intro- 
duced into the Territory. John Brown’s life 
work had begun, 


z 


h 


THE BORDER RUFFIANS HOLD AN ELECTION 


No fair-minded reader of history can dow 
in glancing over the records of that time, tha 
the South “took the first bloody and brutal of- 
fensive in their attempt to force slavery on 
Kansas. Later, the Free: State men from the 
north, under leaders like John Brown, 

Lane and Captain James Monteomeen, ie up 
arms, too, and defended themselves bra 

but at first, they were victims of the Sou "5 
determination to carry its point. 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 29 


The Southerners began the attack by stealing 
the elections for the Territorial legislature. 
Thousands of Missourians, on horseback and 
in wagons, with guns, bowie-knives, revolvers 
and plenty of whisky, poured over the line in 
November, 1854, and encamped near the polling 
places. The ballot boxes were extravagantly, 
even humorously, stuffed; the elections were 
carried for the South. There was nothing con- 
cealed about the affair; in fact, the Missouri 
Beweneners had -gaily whipped up recruits for 
the raid. f 

Many of these men, Border Ruffians, as the 
North called them, were hired for the work. 
Others came for the fun; others because they 
hated Yankees; others because they were de- 
vout believers in Slavery. 

“They wore the most savage looks and gave 
utterance to the most horrible imprecations and 
blasphemies,” said Thomas Gladstone, a rela- 
tive of the great statesm of that name, who 
was in Kansas at the time. “In groups of 
drunken, bellowing, blood-thirsty ~ demons, 
armed to the teeth, they crowded about the 
bars and shouted for drink, or made the night 
hideous with noise on the streets.” —~ 
~ Their fraudulent Pawnee legislature convened 
and passed a code of punishments for Free 
State men. Under the code, no one opposed to 
slavery in any manner could serve on a jury, 
or_hold any office in Kansas. : 

Death itself was the penalty for advising 
slaves to rebel, or even supplying them with 
literature that would have that effect. 

The mere voicing of a belief that slavery was 
illegal in Kansas was made a grave crime. Any 
person who said in public that slavery was 
wrong, or any person who even “introduced 
into the Territory, any book, paper, magazine, 
pamphlet or circular,”—saying this, was to be 
punished by imprisonment at hard labor for 


30 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


a term of not less than five years. 
This notorious Clause 12 was obviously aimed 
at the New York Tribune and other anti-slavery — 
journals, and was meant to shut off eve i 
whisper of free speech. And it did not work. 

For the Free State settlers would not recom 7 
nize the legality of the = and d 
an election of their own. d so there were ~ 
two legislatures in Kansas Territory, two 
ernors and governments. All the fighting ; 
followed centered about this dualism, and about 
the mad, desperate butcheries and burnings be- 
gun by the Southerners, when they saw they 
could not cow the Northerners into pages 

President Pierce, who was pro-siavary. eS: 
message to Congress in which he sided with 
the fraudulent legislature and its code, eo) 
ing it legal, and threatening the Free , 
men, whom he called traitors, insurrectionists, — 
and ‘seditionists against the United States gov- 


\ 
} 
2" — 







ernment. 

In all the Kansaseconflict, he threw federal 
troops and federal politicians st the Free 
State men. The South rejoi at his stand, — 
but the Free State men went on with their — 
work. And John Brown and his sons took a 
leading position in the fight. . 


{ 


THE SACK OF LAWRENCE 


“Yet we will continue to tar d feather 
drown, lynch and hang every white-live 
abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil,” said 
a flamboyant editorial in the uatter Sover- 
eign, a pro-slavery paper published at Atchison, 
Kansas, a Border Ruffian stronghold. 

The Slaveryites lived up to this promise. The 
Free State men at this time had not begun 
to arm, but doggedly and quietly went about — 
organizing their own government at Topeka. 


» gta 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 31 


Their actions infuriated the Southerners. Now 
began the long list of crimes that made the soil 
of Kansas reek with blood. | 

It would be impossible to give a full record 
here of all those crimes. The least that hap- 
pened was the destruction of newspapers that 
protested against Southern injustice, such as 
the Parkville, Missouri, Luminary, which was 
burned down, the machinery thrown in the 
river, and the editors threatened with a sim- 
- ilar fate if they indulged in further free speech. 

There were hundreds of abolitionists mur- 
dered in Kansas; hundreds of their wives and 
children were gibed at and threatened and ter- 
rified; hundreds of their cabins were burnt 
down, and thousands of head of cattle stolen. 


One of the murders was the killing of Samuel 
Collins, owner of a saw-mill near Atchison, by 
Patrick Laughlin, a pro-slavery man. No et- 
fort was made to punish him by the authorities. 
But something was done by them in another 
case. Charles Dow, a young Free State man 
from Ohio, was cruelly shot down from behind 
by Franklin Coleman, a pro-slavery settler from 
Virginia. 

What the authorities did in this case was 
to arrest Jacob Branson, with whom the dead 
man had lived. A pro-slavery sheriff charged 
Branson with having made threats to revenge 
his friend. Branson was rescued by a group 
of his friends with rifles, and taken to Law- 
rence for protection, Lawrence being entirely 
settled by the Free State men. 

The Sheriff called on the Governor, and the 
Governor called on the militia, and with the 
_ aid of Missouri citizens, about twelve hundred 
armed men marched on Lawrence, to “put 
down the rebellion.” 

The men of Lawrence sent out a call to all 
Northerners; and John Brown and his men 
were among those who responded, There were 


$2 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN a i. 


five hundred settlers in Lawren and 
feverishly fortified the town with ambeaie 
ments; but the whole affair ended by a com- 
promise; there was no fighting; only two men 
were killed in a light skirmish. 


they had not been given the chance to burn 


Lawrence down. a 
For Lawrence was a sore spot to the pra 
slavery men. It was the largest Free pi 
town in Kansas, and the center of all 
political activities of that up. It publishe, 
a newspaper, and its Free State Hotel was the : 


headquarters of the Northerner’s government. 


There were other murders, despite the treaty 
signed at this time. And then in February, — 
as Free State men were holding another of 
their elections, they were assaulted at Leaven- — 
worth, and many of them forced to flee to 
Lawrence. 

One of the leaders of the Free State mene 
as he was returning from Leavenworth 
the election, was captured by a company of 
Border Ruffian militia. Wounded and defence- 
less though he was, they literally hacked the 
unfortunate foe of slavery into pieces with 
their hatchets and knives. Not an effort was 
made to punish these murderers, though their 
names were known by everyone. Some of the 
slavery journals even praised the deed, and 
called for more. Said the Kansas Pioneer of 
Kickapoo: 

“Sound the bugle of war over the length 
and breadth of the land, and leave not am 
Abolitionist in the Territory to relate their 
treacherous and contaminating deeds. Strike 
your piercing rifle balls and your glittering 
steel to their black and poisonous hearts.” 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 33 


And in May of that year, after further alarms 
and disturbances, Sheriff Jones returned witua 
an army of 750 “swearing, whisky-drinking ruf- 
fians,” armed with rifles, and even two pieces 
of artillery. This time the Free State men 

were unprepared. John Brown was not there, 
mor any other real leader. The Free State 
men still believed in peace, and legality. And 
they saw their Free State Hotel go up in 
flames, their newspaper plant destroyed, and 
an orgy of drunken destruction let loose among 

their homes. 

_ “Let Yankees tremble, Abolitionists fall, 

» Our Motto is, Give Southern Rights to All.” 

This was the-inscription on one of the ban- 
ners of the invading army. Lawrence was the 

first city to receive these rights. Thereafter 
Free State men knew what to expect; they be- 
gan forming companies of riflemen and guer- 
Trilla fighters to protect their communities 
against Southern rights. 


THE LIBERTY GUARDS 


_. One of these companies was the Liberty 
Guards, as commander of which John Brown 
first received his historic title of Captain. Be- 

sides four of Brown’s stalwart sons, there were 
fourteen other Free State settlers in the com- 
pany, and they were present at the first at- 
tempted raid on Lawrence, which had resulted 
in a compromise and an abortive “treaty.” 

_ Captain John Brown had gathered his men, 

and Was on the way to Lawrence for the second 
time when they were informed by a messenger 
that Lawrence had already been destroyed. The 

Border Ruffians had captured the town with- 
out meeting any resistance, and ha¢ razed it 


a 


34 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


to the ground, the breathless courier reported. 
This startling news was received in a bitter 
silence by the little company. The ey pushed io 
nevertheless, and encamped near 

hearing from — <i further re 

of burnings, killings drunken threa' 

the Southern invaders. 

It was a period of great excitement. The 
Kansans felt as if war had commenced in earn- 
est on them, and that they were to be wi 
out. Some of the men who lived on the Pot- 
tawotamie Creek, near Dutch’s Crossing, heard 
reports that their women had been threatened 
by a group of the toughest pro-slavery ruffians 
who lived there. 

“We expect to be butchered, every Free State 
settler in our region,” one of these men told 
John argh ay 

Here was a story John Brown heard a few 
days before from the lips of a pre young 
girl named Mary Grant, a settler’s ughter 
in the region: 

‘Dutch Bill arrived at our house, horribly 
drunk, with a whisky bottle with a corncob 
stopper, and an immense butcher knife in his 
belt. Mr. Grant, my father, was sick in bed, 
but when they told him that Bill Sherman was 
coming, he had a shot gun put by his side. 
‘Old woman,’ said the ruffian to mother. 
‘you and I are pretty good friends, but damn 
your daughter, I’ll drink her heart's blood.’ 
My little brother Charley succeeded in cajoling 
the drunken man away. 

An old settler named Morse bern hung and 

, let down again by this same Group 
Then they threatened to kill 
but his little boys set up a terrible wailing, and 
begged for his life. The ruffians s him, 
but gave him until sundown to leave the com- 
munity. He wandered in the brush for two 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 38 


or three days with his children, frightened to 
death, and finally died of the excitement. 


There were other such tales, including one 
horrible story of a similar attack on a woman 
in childbirth. The ruffians had also put up 
a notice, advising every Free State settler to 
leave the community in thirty days or have 
his throat cut. 


John Brown and his men discussed this mat- 
ter, and grimly decided to “do something to 
show these barbarians we have some rights.” 
They moved down that night on the Pottawato- 
mie, and calling out the five men who had 
done most of the killing, threatening, and burn- 

ing down of houses, in the region, executed 
/them as a measure of self-defense, 


It was a bloody, stern act, but it proceeded 
out of the same inflamed spirit with which 
the miners at Herrin recently shot down the 

armed strikebreakers who had been brought 
into their section. Many, including some sym- 
pathetic historians like Oswald Garrison Vil- 
lard, have condemned this brutal deed, and have 
called it a stain on John Brown’s life. Murder 
is murder, and it cannot be defended on ethical 
or logical grounds. But when a thug assails 
one with a gun, or threatens one’s wife and 
children, is one to practice non-resistance on 
him? Is his life more valuable than one’s own? 
In such moments men do not think, they act 
as nature tells them to; even a Villard would 
refuse to yield up his life to a thug; he would 
forget logic and ethics, and defend himself. 
And that was what John Brown did; his act 
was a stern and immediate answer to the long- 
continued murders and threats against the 
Free State men of Kansas. It shook the Terri- 
tory to its foundations, and it made of John 
Brown a hunted outlaw. Thereafter he grew. 


7 


36 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


no more corn and built no more cabins for 
ia ee he was a guerrilla captain in the 
2 ° ’ mi 


AFTER POTTAWATOMIE 


John Brown, Jr., and Jason Brown, two ot 
the fighter’s sons, were captured by Missourians 
and suffered incredible tortures after the Pot- 
tawatomie affair. Both men were burning 
with fever, but they were dragged at the ends 
of ropes for two or three days, beaten, hung 
up and then let down, and then chained to ox- 
carts in the wind and rain, John Jr., al 
of a nervous temperament, went 
insane under this treatment, but his captors 
had no mercy. Though he shrieked wildly, and 
though his brother Jason that the 
here ye have pity, their hearts were hard as 

int. 

The following scene is described by Jason: 


“Captain Wood said to me: ‘Keep that man 
still.’ ‘I can’t keep an insane man still,’ said 
I. ‘He is no more insane than you are. If 
you don’t keep him still, we'll do it for you.’ 
I tried my best, but John had not a glimmer 
of reason and could not understand 4a) 

He went on yelling. Three troopers in. 
One struck him a terrible blow on the jaw 
with his fist, throwing him on his side. A 
second knelt on him and pounded him with 
his fist. The third stood off and kicked him 
with all his force in the back of the neck. 
‘Don’t kill a crazy man!’ cried I. ‘No more 
crazy than you are, but we'll fetch it out of 
him.’ After that John lay unconscious for 
three or four hours. We camped about one 
and a half miles southeast of the Adairs. There 
we stayed about two weeks. Then we were 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 37 


ordered to move again. They drove us on 

foot, all the prisoners, chained two and two. 
At Ottawa ford young Kilbourne dropped of a 
sun-stroke.’ 


The men were later released, for they had 
done nothing that could be prosecuted in the 
court where the pro-slavery government 
“troops” had driven them. This was the sort 
of thing John Brown was fighting: it was life 
and death, and no mercy could be expected 
: from the Southerners. Mr. Villard and other 

-timorous friends of John Brown do not seem 

to understand the nature of the battle; and 

they do not understand what giant faith and 

courage it must have taken for an old farmer 
F of fifty-five to continue fighting in such an 
_ atmosphere. 


John Brown did not flinch. Another son, 
Frederick, was shot down in cold blood on 
the steps of the family home at Osawatomie, 
e but the old fighter, shedding a silent tear for 
the loss, for he deeply loved his children, went 
on his stern path. 

The spuriously-elected peaery governor of- 
fered a reward of $3,000 for John Brown, and 
the President of the United States a reward 
of $250. Federal troops scoured the territory 
for him. For months he and his men slept 
out in the fields, flitting from place to place, 
and fighting in many battles. 

With only nine men he fought off a troop 

of twenty-three Southerners at the “battle of 

Black Jack,’ and forced them to surrender. 
“In August, 250 men moved on Osawatomie, 

to destroy it as they had destroyed Lawrence. 
P ohn Brown gathered about forty men to re- 
sist the Southerners, and a hot battle was 
fought, in which, of course, Brown had to 
retreat. The town was thoroughly wiped out, 
and also granted “Southern rights.” 





38 ‘ LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


There were many other skirmishes; the 


name of Captain John Brown, old ae of 
Osawatomie, became a legend in Ka = 
became a sort of Pancho Villa dau ts 
South; a hundred times he was reported acd 
or captured; a hundred times he was blamed 
for wild deeds he had never done. 


Here are two (ontenee — of John 
Brown in the field he f is written by 
August Bondi, a brave and able young Aus- 
trian Jew, who put himself under Brown's 
leadership after the Pottawatomie a 


“We stayed here up to the morning of Sun- 
day, June ist, and during those few days I 
fully succeeded in understanding the ane 
character of my old friend, John Brown. 
exhibited at all times the most affectionate 
care for each of us. He also attended to the 
cooking. We had two meals daily, io geeenet 
of bread, baked in skillets; thisywas was 
down with creek water, mixed with a yfittle 
ginger and a spoon of molasses to ono pint. 
Nevertheless, we kept in excellent gee we 
considered ourselves as one family, 
one another by the consciousness that it was 
our duty to undergo all these privations for 
the good cause. We were determined to share 
any danger with one another, that victory or 
death might find us mee and we were 
united, as a band of brothers, by the love 
and affection toward the man whe with tender 
words and wise counsel, in the br Sg of the 
wilderness of Ottawa creek, prep 
ful of young men for the work of ing tie the 
foundation of a free commonwealth. 

“His words have ever remained firmly en- 


a 


ai i lt te i a ee 


graved in my mind. Many and various were — 


the instructions he gave during - days of 


our compulsory leisure in this ca e ex- | 


pressed himself to us that we shoul never al- — 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 39 


low ourselves to be tempted by any considera- 

tion to acknowledge laws and institutions to 

ioe if our conscience and reason condemned 
em. 

“He admonished us not to care whether a 
Majority, no matter how large, opposed our 
principles and opinions. The largest major- 
ities were sometimes only organized mobs, 
whose howlings never changed black to white 
or night into day. A minority convinced of 
its rights, based on moral principles, would, 
under a republican government, sooner or later 
become the majority.” : 

The other description is that of William A. 
Phillips, then a correspondent of the New 
York Tribune, and later a Colonel in the Civil 
War. Brown, still an outlaw, was on his way 
to Topeka, to be on hand at whatever crisis 
might arise at the opening of the legislature 
elected by the Free State settlers. Phillips 
met him on the way. 


His account is important, for it shows that 
John Brown saw much farther than his own 
times. He knew that there were many other 
things wrong with the social system in Amer- 
ica besides slavery. There are plain indica- 
tions here, as in other accounts, that John 
Brown was one of those early American _ So- 
cialists, such as Horace Greeley, Albert Bris- 
bane, father of Arthur Brisbane, Bronson Al- 
cott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, who 
felt that the abolition of slavery was only the 
first step toward a free America. Wendell 
Phillips, for instance, one of this abolitionist 
band, became after the Civil War one of the 
leading champions of the rights of working- 
‘Men in their battle against the capitalists. 

But here is Colonel Phillips giving his charm- 
ing picture, in the Atlantic Monthly for De 
cember, 1879, of that night ride and the con- 


= NT A re 
¥ = 


40 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


versation he had with Brown as they lay 
bivouacking in the open beneath the stars: 


“He seemed as little disposed to sleep as 4 
was, and we talked; or rather, he did, for I 
said little. I found that he was a thorough 
astronomer; he pointed out the con- 
stellations and their movements. ‘Now,’ he 
said, ‘it is midnight,’ as he pointed to the fin- 
ger marks of his great cl in the . The 
whispering of the wind in the was 
full of voices to him, and the as they 
shone in the firmament of God seemed to in- 
spire him. ‘How admirable is the a of 
the heavens; how grand and beau ! Every- 
thing moves in sublime harmony in the gov- 
ernment of God. Not so with us poor crea- 
tures. If one star is more brilliant than ca aters, 
it is continually shooting in some erratic way 
into space.’ 

“He criticized bene partiés in in Kansas. of 
the pro-slavery men he said that slavery be- 
sotted everything, and made men more brutal 
and coarse; nor did the Free State men es- 
cape his sharp censure. He said we had many 
true and noble men, but too many broken down 
politicians from the older states, who would 
rather pass resolutions than act, and who 
criticized all who did real work. 

“A professional politician, he went on, you 
could never trust; for even if he had con- 
victions, he was always ready to sacrifice his 
principles for his advantage. 


“One of the most ners night, aa 

tain Brown’s conversation that nigh’ and oe ae 
that marked him as a thinker, was 

ment of our forms of social EP c= patitical. lite, life. 
He thought society ought to be ince aging 
on a less selfish basis; for while material in 
terests gained by competition for bread, men 
and women lost much by it. He condemned 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 41 


the sale of land as a chattel, and thought there 
was an infinite number of wrongs to right 
before society would be what it should be, 
but that in our country slavery was the sum 
of all villainies, and its abolition the first 
essential work.” 


THE GREAT PLAN EVOLVES 


Much more can be written of this Kansas 
‘period in John Brown’s life; a large bibliog- 
raphy of Robin Hood literature has gathered 
‘about it. John Brown, and other men like 
him, hastened the solution of the slavery ques- 
‘tion by their firm stand in Kansas. If the 
South had been allowed to add Kansas to the 
‘roster of slave states, it would have crept 
further north, until perhaps there would have 
i slavery up to Canada. It is easy for any 


Die a aie ae i a a 





institution to become permanent; man is a 
creature of conventions. Slavery, like canni- 
-balism among savages, would have in time 

‘become a matter-of-fact doctrine with al) 
America, aie not the Kansas abolitionists 
challenged it. 

_ John Brown left Kansas in 1857, and made 
a trip through New England, gathering friends, 
money, arms and recruits for a new great plan 

that was working in his mind. 

_ He saw that the abolitionists would be suc- 
cessful in making Kansas a free state. The 
job was already half done; but when it was 
‘completed, what next? There would still be 

the vast groaning empire of slavery in the 

“South: there would still be five million black 

folk bought and sold like cattle: beaten, raped, 

murdered as if they were lower than cattle. 

‘The South would still be in the saddle at the 








f 


42 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


White House; the fugitive slave law would 
still be enforced; and churches, business men, 
newspapers, mobs, and United States troops, 
all would join in upholding the devil’s doc- 
trine that slavery was respectable, the law 
of the land. : q 

The Abolitionists, with their few journals, — 
were ever agitating against this that 
was being pretoctes by the United States flag. 
But John Brown knew that only a bold deed 
could shake the union; could make men see 
clearly what slavery was. 


Slavery had become so firmly settled into 
the national life that the few nd aboli- 
tionists only seemed like gadflies biting at the 
hide of a rhinoceros. John Brown saw that 
a pick-axe was needed to draw the blood. The 
pocket-books of the slave-holders must be at- 
tacked. nae | must be sabotaged, and made 
unprofitable. It was such a safe and sane 
business now; it must be made dangerous. 
John Brown planned to go boldly into Vir- 
ginia, with a band of men, and start there a 
large movement of runaway slaves. When 
slaves were no longer meek and submissive, 
when every slave became a potential runaway 
and rebel, slavery would cease to be a pay- 
ing business. Thus reasoned John Brown. — 

In December, 1858, with things at last peace- 
ful in Kansas Territory, and a Free State al- 
most assured, John Brown made a last stir- 
ring raid into Missouri. A Negro slave named 
Jim Daniels had come to one of Brown’s men ~ 
with a pathetic tale. He and his wife and 
babies were to be sold at auction in a few 
weeks, and perhaps separated forever. He 
was a fine-looking, intelligent mulatto, and 
he wept as he told the story. John Brown and 
ten of his men rescued Daniels’ little family 
and carried off to freedom eleven other slave 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 43 


of the vicinity. At dawn the next day the 
caravan of freedom set forth on its long jour- 
‘ney to the Northern Star—to Canada, where 
‘slaves were free. It wag a perilous and ardu- 
ous undertaking. The party had to sleep by 
stealth in barns and icy fields, with armed 
‘sentinels posted all night. The Governor of 
Missouri wired to Washington; money rewards 
were offered for Brown, armed posses were 
sent searching for him, the Federal troops 
combed the state. There were prairie snow- 
storms, and there were little provisions. But 
he old lion brought his charges through to 
‘anada. 

_ One incident of the trip is worth repeating. 
It shows what a terror the mere name of John 
rown had become in Kansas. 

At one place, the ford of a river, Brown’s 
party learned there was a posse of 80 armed 
slavery ruffians waiting to capture him. The 
old man did not turn back, though he had 
only 22 men, black and white. He marched 
down on the ruffians. “They had as good a 
‘position as 80 men could wish,” wrote one of 
Brown’s men, “they could have defeated a 
thousand opponents, but the closer we got to 
the ford, the farther they got from it. We 
found some of their horses,“for they were in 
such haste to fly that some of them mounted 
two on a saddle, and we gave chase and took 
three or four prisoners, whom we later re- 
leased. The marshal who led them went so 
fast one would think he feared the fate of 
Lot’s wife.” : 

_ “Old Captain Brown is not to be taken by 
boys,” said the Leavenworth Times, now Free 
State, “and he invites cordially all pro-slavery 
men to try their hands at arresting him.” 


On March 12th the slaves were safe in Can- 
ida, rejoicing in their happy fortune, after 










44 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


having been brought in the dead of winter, 
through hostile country, some 1,100 miles in 
82 days. One of the slave women had had 
six masters, and four of the party had served 
sixteen owners in all. Now they were free. 
And their little gy were free, and 
never be whipped by a Southern gentlomassil 
or stood on the auction block like a horsé or 
cow. The outlaw John Brown had ‘fone what 
was forbidden by the Supreme Court and the ~ 
President of the United States; and now he 
was planning greater deeds, ; 
John Brown was now fifty-nine years 
and in the last year of his life. He had been 
disciplined in a terrible school in Kansas, but 
what he was about to attempt seemed so mad, 


so reckless, and so suicidally brave that z 
men of the South claimed, after the attem i 


erwtn adm 


THE EVE OF THE TRAGEDY 






that he was but an insane man, and many 
of his conservative friends chose to take this 
view of the case, also. 

Yet John Brown was not insane. 
rationally, like a clear-headed strategist, 
had figured out the situation. He was 
Abolitionist, and was determined to do. any: 
thing to end the brutal slavouaaanas Peas 
ful agitation had been going on for Gonna 
but the North was still apathetic, and , 
South was only more inflamed and settled in 
its ideas. 

What John Brown felt was needed now, 
was to make the men of the North and 
South realize that there would be no 
in the land while slavery endured. What they 
must see was that men like himself w 





Re 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 45 


rise to break that loathsome peace. He would 
go to the South, capture the arsenal at Har- 
'per’s Ferry, in Virginia, and run off all the 
slaves he could find. He would take the 
hills about the Ferry, and with a guerrilla 
band move through the countryside, making. 


slavery a shaky institution. 


If he failed, he could but lose his life. He 
_ would at least stir the nation on the issue of 
- slavery, and force men to take sides. There 
was too much neutrality and silence in the 
land on this issue, this institution that to him 
was a bloody crime against God and humanity. 
He could not fail, he felt; success or failure 
would achieve the same results, Hvents proved 
that he was right. 4% 
-__ John Brown spent that winter and spring in 
New England, giving occasional lectures, and 
meeting all the leading men of the Abolition 
“movement, who collected money for him, 
though he did not fully reveal his plans to any- 
- one. 
George L. Stearns, Gerrit Smith, the philan- 
'thropist, Frank B. Sanborn, the Concord school- 
master and author; Thomas Wentworth Hig- 
_ginson, a brave, noble commander in the Civil 
War, and a charming man of letters afterward; 
Theodore Parker, one of the greatest and most 
sincere Christian clergymen produced in Amer- 
ica; Samuel G. Howe, and others were among 
John Brown’s supporters. Thoreau and Emer- 
son he also met at various times, and both were 
passionate admirers of the stern, pure soldier 
of liberty. 


_ While their Captain was gathering arms and . 


“money for the raid, some of Brown’s men were 
“quartered in a farm-house near Harper’s Ferry, 
while. others were studying the region, and 
‘mapping out routes for the attack and the re- 
om to the hills, 


46 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


It was a cool fall n —_e the 16th of October, 
’ 1859, when Captain John Brown gave the com- 
mand his men had been impatiently await- 

for months: “Men, get on your arms; we 
“a 1 proceed to the Ferry.” Says Mr. Villard, at 
times an eloquent chronicler: 

“It took but a minute to bring the horse and 
wagon to the door, to place Hy it some 7, 
fagots, a sledge hammer, and a crow-bar. 
men had been in readiness for hours; they fad 
but to buckle on their arms and throw 
their shoulders, like army blankets, the 1 
gray shawls which served some for a few brie 

ours in lieu of overcoats, and then became 


over 


their winding sheets. In a moment more, the 


commander-in-chief donned his old io 
Kansas cap, mounted the Np 
solemn march through the chi Ary to the 
bridge into Harper’s Ferry, nearly six miles 
away. 

“Tremendous as the relief of action was, there 
was no thought of cheering or demonstration. 
As the eighteen men with John Brown s 
down the little lane to the road from the farm- 


house that had been ae rison tor so many | 


weary weeks, ry arewell to Capta 
Owen Brown, and rival Barclay Coppoc m7 
F. J. Meriam, who remained as rear. in 
charge of the arms and supplies. The brothers 
Coppoc read the future correctly, for they em- 
braced and parted as men do who know they 
are to meet no more on earth. The damp, lone- 
ly night, too, added to the solemnity o jit all, 
as they passed through its gloom. if to in- 
tensify the sombreness, they met not a a 
soul on the road to question their purpose, o 

to start with fright at the sight of eightoen 
soldierly men coming two by two through th 
darkness as though risen from the grave. 


“There was not a sound but the tramping * 


of the men and the creaking of the wagon, 


¢ 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 47 










bravest of the brave, were to take the bridge 
watchman and so strike the first blow for lib- 


THE ARSENAL IS CAPTURED 


_ Events flashed sharp and terrible and swift 
as lightning after this sombre opening of the 
storm. The telegraph wires were cut, the watch- 
Man at the bridge captured, guards were placed 
at the two bridges leading out of the town, 
and many citizens were taken from the streets 
and held as prisoners in the Arsenal. 


five miles from the Ferry, and with the instinct 
of a dramatist, John Brown seized him and 
freed his slaves as a means of impressing on 
the American imagination that a new reyolu- 
tion for human rights was being ushered in. 

_ The little town was peaceful and unprepared 
this sudden attack, as unprepared as it 







lowever, the alarm had been spread; the church 
‘ rang, military companies from Charles- 


¢éown and other neighboring towns began pour- — 
ing in, the saloons were crowded with nervous 
and hard-drinking re and there was the 
clamor and furor of thousands of awe-struck 
Southerners. No one knew how many men were 
in the Arsenal. No one knew whether the whole 
South was not being attacked by abolition 

or whether or not all the slaves armed 
risen against their ae as they had at- 
tempted to years before in n’’Nat Turner’s and 
other rebellions. 

By noon the Southerners had begun the at- 
tack. They killed or drove out all the guards 
John Brown had stationed at various strategic 

oints in the town; they murdered two of 

rown’s men they had taken risoners, and tor- 3 
tured another. They mana to cut off all 7 


48 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN i 
| 
3 


Brown’s paths of retreat, and by nightfall, he 
and the few survivors of his men were in a 


bak 
is young son Oliver, only twenty — 


and recently married, died in the ht. He 
had been painfull wounded, and , in his 
agony. that his father shoot him and Telieve 


him from pain. But the old pops = held his 
boy’s hand, and told him to be —s and to 
die like a man. Another ay Par 
had been killed earlier in the ightin 
Brown had now given three sons ting. John 
and was soon himself to be a mie Fy Z 

There were left alive and see 
five of Brown’s men. The Vir 
numbering, with the civilians in the adn up 
the thousands, seemed afraid to attack this lit- 
tle group of desperate men. In the dawn ‘ot 
the next morning, however, United States 
ey, under the famous commander, Robert 

‘then a Colonel in the Federal for 

eed the arsenal and captured it aa Sn 
Brown refused to surrender to the 
stood waiting proudly for the Caen w 


4 


4 
at: 
» 

ohn 

3 

a 

a 


aT a a 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 49 


they broke down the door and came raging 
like tigers at him. 

A fierce young Southern officer ran at him 
with a sword, that bent double as it pierced 
to the old man’s breast-bone. The young South- 
erner then took the bent weapon in his hands 
and beat Brown’s head unmercifully with the 
hilt, bringing the blood, and knocking senseless 
the old unselfish and tender champion of poor 
Negro men and women. Those near him thought 
John Brown was dead; but he was still alive; 
he had still his greatest work to do. 


JOHN BROWN’S MEN 


I have written almost entirely of John Brown, 
and because of necessities of space I have given 
little attention to the brave youths who fought 
under him at Harper’s Ferry. Yet here I must 
stop and with only the facts, paint some por- 
trait of the men who followed John Brown. 
It will be seen that they were no ordinary ruf- 
fians, no bandits, adventurers or madmen, as 
the South called them at the time. They were 
pane crusaders, thoughtful, sensitive and 

rave. They had a philosophy of life; and they 
were filled with passion for social justice. One 
may disagree with such men, but one must not 
fail to respect them. 

There were twenty-one men with John Brown 
at Harper’s Ferry, sixteen of whom were white 
and five colored. Only one was of foreign birth; 
nearly all were of old American pioneer stock. 

John Henry Kagi was the best educated of 
the raiders, largely self-taught, a fine debater 
and speaker, and an able correspondent for the 
New York Tribune and the New York Evening 


Post. He had been a school-teacher in Virginia, 


50 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


and had come to know and hate slavery there, 

protesting so vigorously that he was finally 

run out of the State. He practised law in Ne- 

braska, but left this to join John Brown in 

ne Kansas fighting. He was killed at Harper’s 
erry. 


Aaron Dwight Stevens was in many ways 
the most attractive and interesting of the per- 
sonalities about John Brown. He ran away 
from his home in Massachusetts at the age of 
sixteen, and joined the United States army, 
pehiny | in Mexico during the Mexican War. 
Later he was sentenced to death for leading a 
soldiers’ mutiny against an offensive pro-slavery 
Major at Taos, New Mexico. President Pierce 
commuted the sentence to three years at hard 
labor in Fort Leavenworth. Stevens escaped 
from this prison, and joined the Free State 
forces in Kansas, for he had always been a 
firm abolitionist. Stevens came of old Puritan 
stock, his great-grandfather PaEr been a cap- 
tain in the Revolutionary War. was a Man 
of superb bravery and of wonderful peyeies 
well over six feet, handsome, with b pene- 
trating eyes and a fine brow. He had a charm- 
ing sense of humor, and a beautiful baritone 
voice, with which he sang in camp and in 
prison. He was hung soon after Jo Brown 
for the Harper’s Ferry raid. 


John E. Cook was a young law student of 
Brooklyn, New York, a reckless, impulsive and 
rather indiscreet youth, to whom much was 
forgiven because of his genial smile and gen- 
erous nature. 

Charles Plummer Tidd escaped after the raid, 
and died a First Sergeant in one of the battles 
of the Civil War. He had not much education, 
but good common sense, and was always read- 
ing and studying in an attempt to repair his 
lack of training. Quick-tempered, but kind- 


; 








zt 


” 


- 


and hung, was well-liked even by the South- 
- erners who saw him in jail, and some of them 


-_ 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 61 


hearted, a fine singer and with strong family 
affections. 

Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, killed at Har- 
per’s Ferry in his 27th year, was also of Revolu- 
tionary American stock. -A sworn abolitionist, 


- he wrote in a letter three months before his 


death: “Millions of fellow-beings require it of 
us; their cries for help go out to the universe 
daily and hourly. Whose duty is it to help 
them? Is it yours? Is it mine? It is every 
man’s, but how few there are to help. But there 


are a few to answer this call, and dare to an- 


swer it in a manner that shall make this land 

of liberty and equality shake to the center.” 

_ Albert Hazlett, executed after Brown, was a 

Pennsylvania farm worker, “a good-sized, fine- 

looking fellow, overflowing with good nature 

and social feelings.” ; 
Edwin Coppoc, also one of those captured 


hoped to get him pardoned. He came of Quaker 
farmer stock. - 

Barclay Coppoc, his brother, was not yet twen- 

_ ty-one when he fought at the Arsenal. He es- 

caped after the raid, but was killed in the Civil 

War. After the raid he had returned to Kan- 

sas, and had nearly lost his life in an attempt 


— to free some slaves in Missouri. 


4 
5 


_- William Thompson, a neighbor of the Browns 
at North Elba, in New York, was killed at Har- 
per’s Ferry, in his 26th year. He was full of 
fun and good nature, and bore himself unflinch- 
ingly when face to face with death. 

Dauphin Osgood Thompson, his brother, was 
only twenty years old, when he met the same 
fate for the cause of freedom. Dauphin was a 


handsome, inexperienced country boy, “more 


like a shy young girl than a warrior, quiet and 
good,” said one of the Brown women later, 


62 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


Oliver Brown, John Brown’s younges = 
was also twenty years old when he “fled 
Harper’s Ferry. is girl-wife and her 

died early the next year. “Oliver deve 
rather slowly,” says: Miss Sarah Brown. “In 
his earlier teens he was always ays pre-cete pied, 
absent-minded—always reading, and then it was 
impossible to catch his attention. But in his 
last few years he came out very fast. His awk- 
wardness left him. He read every solid book 
that he could find, and was especially fond of 
Theodore Parker’s writings, as was father. 
Had Oliver lived, and not killed himself with 
over- coef he would have made his mark. By 
Sa ber a ag the sale of liquor was stopped at 

orth 


John Prats Cone a free colored man, 
25 years old, was educated at Oberlin College. 
He was dignified and manly, and in jail th 
were prominent Southerners who were joven 
- nous his fine qualities. He was hung for 
the ra 

Stewart Taylor, the only one of the raiders 
not of American birth, was a aoe 
wagon-maker, 23 years old. was fond of 
history and debating, and heart and soul in 
the abolition cause. Killed in the Arsenal. 


William H. Leeman, the Bs of the raid- 
ers, killed in his 19th y e had -age L. 
work a shoe factory at Haverhill, Mass., 
peor ib — old, and though with littie a 

tion, “had a good intellect and great ingenui- 
ty.” He was the “wildest” of Brown’s men, for 
he smoked and drank occasionally, but the 
Old Puritan captain liked him, nevertheless, for 
he was boyish, handsome, and brave. 

Osborn Perry Anderson was also a Negro. 
- ep after the raid, and tought’ through 

e Civil 

Francis Jackson Meriam, was a wealthy, 


LIFE OF JOHN BhowN 53 


young abolitionist who put all his fortune into 
the cause, and came from New England to 


join John Brown in the raid. He escaped also, ~- 


and died in 1865, after having been the captain 
of a Negro company in the Civil War. 


Lewis Sheridan Leary, colored, left a wife and 


% a six-months-old baby at Oberlin, Ohio, to go 


to Harper’s Ferry. He was a harness maker 
by trade, and descended on one side fr an 
Irishman, Jeremiah O’Leary, who fought in the 


_ Revolution. Leary was 25 years old when he 


‘ 
4 


ié 


died of his terrible wounds in the Arsenal 
fighting. 
Owen Brown, another of John Brown’s cone 


was stalwart and reliable, and is reporte 


_ original in expression and thought, like all the 


; 


Browns. He is also said to have been quite 
humorous. He survived the raid, and died in 
Pasadena, Calif., in 1891. 


Watson Brown, another son, 24 years old 
when killed at the Ferry, was tall and rather 
fair, very strong. and a man of marked ability 
and sterling character. 


Dangerfield Newby was born a slave in Vir- 
ginia, but his father, a Scotchman, freed him 
with other mulatto children. Newby had a wife 
and seven children still in slavery, and he was 
trying to raise money to buy them, for they 
were to be sold further south. He failed at this; 
and. joined John Brown in desperation. He was 
killed at the Ferry, and so failed to free his 
poor family, as he had dreamed. 


Shields Green, colored, was also born a slave, 
but escaped, leaving a little son in slavery. 
He met Brown through Frederick Douglass, 
the great Negro orator, and joined in the raid, 
though many warned him it would mean his 
death. He was uneducated, but deeply emo- 
tional, and deeply attached to the “ole man,” 























Se LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


as he called John Brown. He was hung after 
the raid; his age 23. 

They were all young men; the average age 
of the band was 25 years and five months. 
They were all strong, intelligent, in love with — 
life and eager for the future; but they chose — 
to attempt this mad, dangerous deed rather than ~ 
consent any longer to the lie and to the power 
of black slavery. 

John Brown they followed and loved as one 
would a strong and kindly father. There was 
always somet ing patriarchal about . 
Brown and his soldiers, many observers saic¢ 
made his deed seem like some story out of 
wie _ swift and terrible justice of the Le 
[8) os . : 









* 


THE “NIGGER-THIEF” 


When the South heard of John Brown’s ; 
there was a wave of immediate ae Men — 
poured by the thousands into the little eed : 
town, and the bars were filled with savage, +h 
drunk men, who talked of lynching the “old 
nigger-thief.” Governor Wise had come down 
from the capital, and he and others prevented 
any such disgraceful procedure. He himself 
was mystified by the raid. It seemed an in- 
credible performance, for these Southerners 
could not understand the moral sion that 
animated tne Abolitionists. To the south Ne- 
groes were property—private property. And an ~ 
attempt to free slaves was to them insane, iF — 
legal and criminal. When men came with arms 
for this purpose and Southerners were killed in 
defending slavery, the crime became doubly 
damnable. be 

John Brown, after his capture, was taken with 








LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 55 


Aaron Stevens to a room nearby. Lying on a 
cot, his head bandaged, his hair clotted and tan- 
gled, hands and clothing powder-stained and 

_ blood-smeared, the old lion was questioned by 

- Governor Wise and a party of officials, who 

_ included Robert E. Lee, Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, 

Senator Mason, Congressman Vallandigham of 

Ohio, and other pro-slaveryites. 

Their questions were a summary of the at- 
 titude of the South to such as he. And John 
_Erewn, though he was wounded and a prisoner, 
though everywhere enemies surrounded him, 
and the gallows stared him full in the face, 
answered their questions calmly and courteous- 
ly, without the slightest show of fear. 

“Who sent you here?” one official asked. 
They were trying to worm out the names of 
-Northerners who had given Brown money for 
the raid, so as to prosecute them for conspiracy 
in murder, , 

“No man sent me here,’ John Brown ap- 

_ swered calmly. “It was my own prompting, and 

that of my Maker, or that of the devil, which 
ever you please. I acknowledge no man in hu- 

_ man form.” ; 

" “What was your object in coming?” 

“TI came to free the slaves.” 4 

j paand you think you were acting righteous- 

ahs iy?” 

. “Yes. I think, my friends, you are guilty of 
a great wrong_against God and humanity. I 
think it right to interfere with you to free 
those you hold in bondage. I hold that the 
Golden Rule applies to the slaves, too.” 

“And do you mean to say you believe in the 

_ Bible?” some one said, incredulously. They 

could not understand this man; they only saw 

a wild, mad “nigger-thief” in him. 

f ee raaly I do,” John Brown said with dig- 

mt Ye 3 











56 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


“Don’t you know you are a seditionist, a 
traitor, and that you have taken ? arms 
against the United States government f 

“I was trying to free the slaves. I have tried 
moral suasion for this purpose, but I don’t think 
the people in the slave states will ever be con- 
vinced they are wrong.” 

“You are mad and fanatical.” 

“And I think you people of the South are 
mad and fanatical. Is it sane to k five mil- 
lion men in slavery? Is it sane to think such 
a system can last? Is it sane to suppress all 
who would speak against this system, and to 
murder all who would interfere with it? Is it 
sane to talk of war rather than give it up?” 


Thus John Brown uttered his challenge to the ~ 


South; but they failed to und 


THE TRIAL AT CHARLESTOWN - 


And they failed to understand that it was 
not he who was on trial at the Charlestown 
court-house a month later, but the whole 
slavery system. 

Every moment of that trial was reported in 
the newspapers of the nation. Every reader in 
America knew of the wonderful strength and 
majesty of John Brown in the court-room. The 
North began thinking about slavery as it had 
never thought before. John Brown was so mani- 
festly pure in his intentions; manifestly a cru- 
sader, and people were forced to try to un- 
derstand why an old, gray-haired farmer should 
have taken up arms at the age of sixty, after 
a life spent in useful occupations. 

His dignity, his piety, his reputation as a ter- 
rible fighter, and the Biblical sublimity of the 
picture of this white-bearded patriarch sur- 


i LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 57 
_ rounded by his seven sons, all of them armed 
_ with rifles, all of them ready to die for the 
' cause of abolition—these. had their powerful 
effect on the imagination of the North. Hosts of 
_ new friends rose up in Brown’s defense; leg- 
islatures passed resolutions asking for his par- 
don, Congressmen began speaking out, newspa- 
pers suddenly found themelves in danger of 
osing their subscribers if they spoke against | 
John Brown; everywhere in the North men 
found themselves waking from a dream, and 
coming into the clear, white vision of John 
Brown. They saw slavery as if for the first 
time in all its horrors; they could not help 
taking sides. And the South became more and 
more inflamed with rage as the trial progressed, 
ore tore reverberations reached it from the 
North. 
__ John Brown was tried on three charges, mur- 
der, treason, and inciting the slaves to rebel- 
lion. The trial was quickly over; it was but a 
formality. The jury, of course, returned the 
verdict of guilty, and John Brown, lying on his 
cot in the court-room, said not a word, but 
2 sedi quietly over on his side, when he heard 
















A few days later, Judge Parker pronounced 
_ the sentence of death, and this time John Brown 
rose from his cot, and drawing himself up to 
his full stature, with flashing eagle eyes, and 
calm, clear and distinct tones, he addressed the 
citizens of America. He said many things that 
they were soon to understand clearly on the 
battlefields of the Civil War. 


“Had I taken up arms in behalf of the rich, 

the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, 
or in behalf of any of their friends, or any of 
their class, every man in this court would have 
deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than 
of punishment. But this Court acknowledges 


58 LIFE OF JOHN AB 


the validity of the law of God. 

kissed here which is the ras and a ieh, 
teaches me that all things that I would have 
men do unto me, so must I do unto ag a. 
endeavored to act up to that instruction. I 
fought for the poor; and t say it was right, for 
they are as Lack as any of you; God is no re- 
specter-of persons. 

“I believe that to have interfered as I have 
done, as I have always freely admitted I have 
done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no 
wrong, but right. Now, if Pit is deemed neces- 
sary that I should forfeit my life for the te | 





country whose rights are disregarded by wick- 
re cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be 
one.’ 

Judge Parker fixed the date for on 
December 2nd, 1859, a month a It was a 
fatal mistake for the South oun Brown's — 
gis gift at the hands of tue. Gon he believed 


THE AGITATOR IN JAIL 


For in that month, John Brown accomplished | 
more for abolition than even the stern deeds 
of Kansas had effected. He had put by the 
sword forever, and now for a month took B 
the pen and made it as powseral a@ weapon. 
wrote innumerable letters to Northern friends 
and they were published and read e 
Their tone was Christ-like; no longer was Brown 
the militant Captain in the field, but the sweet, 
patient martyr waiting for his -_ 
quil Joy. In many letters he repea' 
ment t he is glad to die; that rag hy death is is 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 59 


of more value to the cause than ever his life 
could have been. This was no vainglorious 
hysterical gesture with John Brown; he was 
calmly certain of it; he slept peacefully as a 
_child at night, and wrote his letters by day, 
secure in his tranquil wisdom. Friends were 
_ planning an attempt to rescue him, but he for- 
ade them to try, for he really felt that his 
death was necessary. “I am worth now infinite- 
ly more to die, than to live,” he said. 
__ And in his letters he gave Americans his last 
Warning on the slavery question. He told them 
it must be settled; it could not go on. His let- 
ters were so strong, manly, and yet so touch- 
ing, that even the jailor wept as he censored 
them in the course of his duties. As Wendell 
Phillips said, the million hearts of his country- 
men had been melted by that old Puritan soul. 


With absolute equanimity, John Brown wrote 
his will, wrote his last few letters to his fam- 
ily, determined the coffin in which he was to 
be buried, and the inscription on the family 
_ Monument, said farewell to his fellow-prisoners 
and jail-keepers. On the morning of December 
_2nd he stood calmly on the steps of the scaf- 
fold and gazed about him. Before leaving his 
cell he had handed to another prisoner the fol- 
lowing last and uncompleted message: 

“J, John Brown, am now quite certain that 
the crimes of this guilty land will never be 
purged away but with blood. I had, as I now 
think, vainly flattered myself that without 
much bloodshed it might be done.” 

Now, as he looked about, he could see massed 
beyond the fifteen hundred soldiers Virginia 
had felt necessary for this execution, the hazy 
outlines of the Blue Ridge mountains. The 

sun was shining; the sky was blue, and his 
heart was at peace. “This is a beautiful coun- 
try,” he said, “I never had.the pleasure of really 






4. 


60 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


seeing it before.” He walked ig aa com- 

posure up the steps, watched b ie oe of the 

soldiery and officialdom of s holding Vir-— 

gin nia. They saw not a tremor his face or 
dy; not even when the cap was drawn over 

his head, his arms pinioned at the the 

noose slippéd around his neck. He had 

to have the solace of any ministers, for they 

believed in slavery, and he told them he 

not regard them as Christians: He needed no 

man’s solace; he was braver than any — 

there. “Shall I give you the re when 

trap is to be sprung?” said a friendly 

“No, no,” the serene old man answered, 

get it over quickly.” 

And quickly enough, it was es hea tor J 
Brown. The trap was sp 
between heaven and earth. In ts pal 
lence that followed, the voice of 
ton declaimed solemnly, the official © Be 
“So perish all such enemies of Vireiniet Rit 
such enemies of the Union! All such foes of 
the human race!’ 

That was the verdict of the South, still in- 
fatuated and blinded by its slave But 
on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line men — 

were pronouncing a different verdict on John 
Brown, and on the Y thee side of the Atlantic, 
the greatest man of letters in Europe, Victor ; 
Hugo, was saying: i. 

“In killing Brown, the o oa States have 
committed a crime which will take its place — 
among the calamities of history. The rupture of — 
the Union will regs follow the assassination 

7 
4 
" 






of Brown. As for John Brown, he was an 
apostle and a hero. The gifbbet has only in- 
ereased his glory, and made him a martyr.” 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 61 


HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON 


| John Brown was hung on December 2, 1859. 

_ Exactly eleven months later Abraham Lincoln 

was elected President of the United States. 

Exactly eight months after that, Northern 

troops were marching southward, to put down 

: Ee rebellion of the slave states that had hung 
own. 


No one at the time believed events would 
march so swiftly after Brown’s death. There 
were many who knew that some sort of con- 
flict between the North and South was inevi- 
table; it had been brewing for decades. But 
there were as many more who were confident 
that slavery would win-its legal fight, and 
would spread over the whole continent. And 
i the great mass of Americans-just faintly un- 
derstood the issues involved; to most of them, 
John Brown seemed ‘some kind of mad fanatic. 


President Lincoln’s election ‘undoubtedly 
provoked the Civil War. And his election 
was undoubtedly due to the discussion on slav- 
ate that raged after John Brown’s deed. Lin- 

n was the first Northerner to. be elected 
in forty years; the South had always carried 
things before it, and would have done so again 
had not John Brown roused the entire North 
to a consciousness of what slavery meant. 

He did more than all the abolitionists had 
pen able to do in their fifty years of agita- 
ion : 

And yet even most of his friends thought 
him mad at the time of the deed. Abraham 
Lincoln, in a campaign speech at Cooper 
Union, in New York, said: “Old John Brown 
has been executed for treason against a state. 

We cannot object, even though he agreed with 









E 


— = 


62 LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 


us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot 
excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.” 


Only men of the stamp of Wendell Phillips 
fully understood what John Brown had done. 
His funeral. oration at the last resting place 
of John Brown’s body had all the oo of 
the prophets: 


“Marvelous old man!....He has abolished 
slavery in Virginia. You may say that this is 
too much. Our neighbors are Pr very last 
men we know. The hours = us are 
the ones we appreciate the Fa en walked 
Boston streets, when night < = Bunker 
Hill, and pitied Warren, sa ying ish man! 
Thrown away his life! y tant 
ure his means better’ Now we see 
ing colossal on that blood-stained sod, and 
severing that day the tie which bound Boston 
to Great Britain, That n “ey George III ceased 


True, the slave is still there. So, when the 
ills, it looks 


ber, not a tree. Tone Brown has alee the © 


roots of the slave system; it only breathes— 
it does not live—hereafter.” 


Wendell Phillips was a prophet; and even 
men of wide vision like pie = could not at- 
tain his lofty view. At first there was a rush 
of Northern politicians to disavow and con- 
demn John Brown’s deed. Later, there was 
approval; still later understanding; still later, 
worship. 


Yes, the old man seemed mad, as all pioneers 
are mad. Gorky has called it the madness of 
the brave. But such madness seems necessary 


se 


LIFE OF JOHN BROWN 63 


to the world; the world would sink into a bog 
of respectable tyranny and stagnation were 
there not these fresh, strong, ruthless tempests 
to keep the waters of life in motion. 


Who knows but that some time in America 
the John Browns of today will be worshipped 
in like manner? The outlaws of today, the 
known soldiers of freedom. 


“And his soul goes marching on,” 





i 


LITTLE BLUE 


Other | Little 


es 
Plays. 


64 


883 The Creditor. 

384 Four One-Act 
Strindberg. 

462 Everyman. A Morality Play. 

418 The Bacchantes. Euripides, 

835 Land of Heart’s Desire. 
Yeats. 

229 Les Precieuses Ridicules 
(English). Moliere. 

3809 Frobody Who Apes Ni 


(English). Moliere. 
371 a on Etna, 


376 Waean of No Importance. 
Wilde. 


354 The League of Youth. Ibsen. 
853 Doll’s House. Tbsen. 
802 Wild Duck. Ibsen. 
303 Rosmersholm. Ibsen. 
350 Hedda Gabler. Ibsen. 
295 The Master Builder. Ibsen. 
80 Pillars of Society. Ibsen. 
16 Ghosts. Henrik Ibsen. 
337 Pippa Passes. Browning. 
378 Maid of Orleans. Samuels. 
879 The King Enjoys Himself. 
Embers 
6 Em . Haldeman-Julius. 

90 The Mikado. W. S. Gilbert. 

31 Pelleas and Melisande. 
Maeterlinck. 

316 Prometheus Bound. 
Aeschylus. 

308 She Stoops to Conquer. 
Oliver Goldsmith. 


131 Redemption. 
226 The Anti-Semites 
Schnitzler. 


Shakespeare’s Plays 


859 The Man Shak 
Vol, 1. Frank Harris. 






BOOK SERIES 


Blue Books 


244 Much 


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